During the last hundreds of years, people have been crossing countries and borders within Europe to pass or get into a new country. Their objectives might have been to travel, to trade or to build a new life. In order to this, different aspects of culture and heritage have been brought along all of Europe. But, where is the origin of Europe? Where does Europe come from? One has to go back into history to find the origin source: The Roman Empire. Nearly from its beginning it had a tremendous impact on the afterlife. Some people call Rome the "ancient European Union". Many European countries have a very important heritage from the Ancient Romans: the language. In modern times, topics like military, architecture, law, culture and political institutions of democracy were influenced from the way the ancient Romans did it. The project entitled "How Roman Are you?" will be implemented by six partner schools from Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy, Croatia and Greece and, as the majority of our pupils don't think of the topics above, it has the objective to expand the knowledge of our pupils and exchange good practices in this field to achieve greater competences needed in daily life in the 21st century. Project objectives are: - become aware of and improve knowledge of European history and the common origin of different cultures - realize the importance of belonging to the EU by participating in this project and by cooperating with different nations - get to know similarities and common values of European cultures - What does connect us? - increase openness of pupils and step out of their comfort zone to improve skills in general - enable pupils to widen their horizon and make formal and informal contact with foreigners - learn respectful interaction and non-verbal behaviour - develop intercultural competences (in interacting with people from different cultures and in experiencieng daily (family and school) life in foreign countries) - get to know different, new values and beliefs in the increasingly globalized world - especially value their own things - develop ICT skills, critical thinking and get open-minded in interaction with people - to connect the curricula of different subjects by implementing project and involving all teachers, todevelop an interdisciplinary knowledge. Ambassador pupils are selected to participate in transnational activities between pupils aged between 12 and 15, according to their merit and linguistic competence, encouraging the participation of pupils who face economic and social obstacles, in order to allow them to travel abroad, interacting with other cultures, communicationg in another language and contributing to becoming adults with open and tolerant minds. The pupils/teachers participating in the project have online meetings and offline information exchanges with their European partners in order to prepare the next mobilities and activities, presenting their needs and organizing what they will have to do. Pupils select important information to disseminate during the project (project website, school website, local newspaper articles ...). To implement the activities and achieve the project's objectives, pupils, teachers and members of local communities work together, enriching the work thanks to the particular skills of each one. The joint work of the project allows everyone involved to improve their language skills, ITC skills, personal development as well as their knowledge of different areas (History; Sports and games; Languages; Architecture; Culture and political institutions of Democracy). We expect to achieve the following results during the project: - six multimedia documents (video or PPT/Prezi) with summary information from all partners about their school, region and country (population; economic data; ...) - a logo for the project - a calender - a virtual museum in form of a web page with several multimedia documents that show the influence of the Romans in the different partner countries, namely in the topics: History; Democracies; Sports and games; Languages; Architecture and Culture) for the dissemination of project activities - an e-twinning space, so each participant of the project can communicate with the other participants. - exhibitions We expect the following impact and benefits in the long term: the strengthened awareness of communication in a foreign language (English) and increased interest in learning other European languagea , the increased tolerance to social and cultural differences, the increased willingness of teachers to take on new challenges and projects, the increased openness of the teachers to educational cooperation, perception of the teaching staff as active and involved in lifes of local people, improved educational offer of the schools, the increased experience in implementation of EU projects, the opportunity to use examples of good practices by other organizations.
The project entitled "How Roman are you?" was initiated by the German school IGS Lüneburg and took place in the period from 2019 to 2023. With the help of the E-Twinning platform, the following partner schools were found: ITT Marconi in Rovereto (Italy), Osnovna skola Bartola Kasica in Vinkovci (Croatia), Colegio de Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes in Granada (Spain), Agrupamento de Escolas Rosa Ramalho in Barcelos (Portugal) and 4th Gymnasium Volos in Volos (Greece). The implementation was made quite difficult by the Corona pandemic. Nevertheless, the project could be carried out because the project period was extended and travelling became possible again. Due to the new scheduling of the individual mobilities, some planned activities could not be carried out during the mobilities. However, all partner schools made an effort to make the programme as appropriate as possible to the theme and exciting. In the first mobility in Italy (end of November 2021), the focus was on history to find out how the respective partner countries came into being and to what extent their origins can be traced back to the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, the German team was not able to take part in this mobility, as at that time all schools in Lower Saxony were banned from travelling by the state ministry due to Corona. In May 2022, the mobility took place in Vinkovci, Croatia, under the consideration of Roman culture. The group mainly focused on the way of life of the Romans and made links with today. Teachers conducted workshops and lectures with their groups about life in ancient Rome. In October 2022, the mobility took place in Granada, Spain. There, the pupils and teachers focused on Roman architecture. Not only Roman buildings in their own country were presented, but also different excavation sites were visited, which showed the structure and construction of Roman houses/villas. In addition, different architectural structures were recreated in miniature with plasticine. The subsequent mobility in Germany took place at the end of November 2022. The focus topic for this mobility was "language". The pupils mainly studied the Latin language in order to explore the common origin of the languages of all participating countries. They also discovered that many terms are similar in the different languages and that some Latin words are still used. In March 2023, they went to Barcelos in Portugal, where the theme was "Democracy". For example, the students from each country gave short presentations on the development of democracy in their countries. This was very interesting for the participating students, as some countries are still very young democracies and they thus learned that the form of government "democracy" is not self-evident. In the last mobility, in May 2023, which took place in Volos/Greece, the topic was "Sport and Games". There, the pupils of all participating countries competed in a competition of running disciplines and basketball. In addition, various games from the respective countries were presented in short presentations based on sports in the Roman Empire. Between the mobilities, the small groups from the participating countries worked on the content and language of the preparations for the coming exchange, mostly in the form of a working group. In the process, contacts were established in advance and, above all, knowledge of digital tools was trained. Especially in the phase of the corona-related lockdown, additional video conferences took place in order to stay in contact and continue working together. This enabled the students to establish initial contact with each other and a sense of community slowly developed. Due to the extension of time, the project has accompanied the pupils over a period of four years and has thus made up an essential part of their youth. Besides the content-related learning gain, it was above all the cultural exchange with the host families and the host school that left a lasting impression on the students. It was not only their linguistic competence in English that was promoted, but above all the insight into another culture, another family life as well as other school systems. Certain commonalities and differences could be clearly identified. Our initial intention to motivate pupils to develop intercultural competences has proved to be an attained goal. In the process, our students have become quite aware of how much the culture of Germany is based on the ancient Roman culture; much to their astonishment.